Sunday, July 19, 2015

Crash Bang Wallop

A very strange weekend last weekend. We walked past the old hospital on the way back from dinner, muttering about it being turned into "Flats for Twats (TM)", and the time we got lost in the corridors underneath it trying to find a cashpoint to pay the nuns.  Neither of us could remember the last time we'd been in hospital (me: wisdom teeth, 1991; him: thumb operation, 2003 or 4).

Two minutes later, JM twists his ankle in a pothole, falls over and swears a lot while clutching his leg and not crying. It isn't broken, but it is fucked. He drags it up the stairs home, is iced and raised and strapped and drugged, and goes to bed miserable. 

The next morning, I go to the shop to buy him a comic, a bun and a bandage.  Two minutes later, I am on my face, having twisted my ankle in a pothole.  Someone asks me if I am OK. I am, except there is blood coming out of my trousers and I feel a bit hot. 

I get back.  JM is now in the armchair looking at his laptop.  He has had an allergic reaction to his drugs, and his eye is swollen up. He cannot take any more painkillers. His leg is wrapped in ice in a leaky sandwich bag. The cat sits on his laptop. It is pitiful. 

Then I start puking.  I go very cold, then very hot, and it all shoots out.   It is quite exciting because I am genuinely incapacitated and can't stand up.   I drift in and out of sleep all day having a weird dream about Channing Tatum. 

Channing Tatum (wrapping his arms around me from behind): I'm putting my arms around you because I love you so much. 

Me: But Channing Tatum, you can't, I'm so old and so fat and I've got a thing that needs cutting off. I am not showing you that.  Or that come to think of it.  And definitely not that. 

Channing Tatum: I do not care. I know you don't believe me. But I am going to show you with my slow steady love that I love you. And your thing that needs cutting off. I would like to squidge it. 

Me (really wishing Channing Tatum would give over): Channing Tatum stop it.  

When I am not dreaming about Channing Tatum, I watch 2 episodes of Pappano's Classical Voices* and weep at story of Fritz Wunderlich falling off the stairs at a hunting lodge and dying.  I drink water and throw it up, drink water and sleep. JM limps about. We are still in our pyjamas, and stay in them until we go to work on Monday morning. 

We are OK now, apart from my scabs, my lack of 7lbs, and JM's bruises. In fact, we are so incredibly well that we spent the weekend shoving things in cupboards and making the house look like normal people live in it, because THE PHOTOGRAPHER IS COMING and it is going on the market.   (If anyone wants it, let me know. It will be perfect for you if you are looking for a house 45 minutes outside Montreal with a replica 16th French bread oven and a cellar big enough for 2 kayaks.)   

Yes. We really are moving - and to a place without potholes, too! I am so excited I am going to throw up.

(If anyone has any 'how to move from Canada to the UK or France' tips, do send them in. I did UK to Canada, and JM did US to Canada (twice), but we haven't been the other way yet.  If the tips are things like "drink some gin" and "relax it'll be fine", I'm in.)

Pip pip!

NWM


* I really love this programme. I don't know anything about opera or singing and now I know enough to go and find out more.  I'm going to write to Sir Antonio Pappano tomorrow to thank him and I'm pretty sure - judging by my relationship with C Tatum - that he'll write back.





  

7 comments:

Dave Shelton said...

Thank you for reacquainting me with 'give over' which I feel I must now reintroduce to my own vocabulary (and possibly include in next book).

And good luck with moving shenanigans. I have only moved within the same city for the last 28 years so am no help, but I wish you well.

Unknown said...

That was almost certainly more fun to read about than to live through.I should warn you that most parts of the UK are pothole-infested these days, on account of The Crisis (aka Tory ****ers [apply expletive of choice]).
Good luck with it all!

katie said...

Hello. I have a tip. Lots of new and exciting gins have come on the market in the last 8 (?) years. So the tip is this: DON'T drink G'Vine (French) gin because it is disgusting. DO drink Caorunn (Scottish) gin. Yum.

monkeymother said...

I am very disappointed in your delirious choice of Channing Tatum. He is too beefy and has a ridiculous name.

Advice re potholes = correct.

Advice re gin = Undoubtedly right about French gin (although Grey Goose vodka is v. good, apparently). Like a bit of Sipsmith's myself (first made in Hammersmith).


NON-WORKINGMONKEY said...

MY GOD IT IS LIKE THE OLDEN DAYS. IT IS LYNNE DIXON AND KATIE AND MM UP TO THEIR OLD TRICKS. Thank you for these excellent comments and advices. Lynne it is a fair point, I think I would rather break my ankle in a Tory-neglected pothole than a Labour-neglected pothole, though, as gives excuse to shout FUCKING TORIES as falling like an old fat tree being felled, and giving a further excuse to shout FUCKING TORIES while not getting treatment in local NHS hospital.

Katie & MM I will all over your drink choices. MM Channing inserted himself (as it were!!) into my dreams!! I would not 'have a go' on him by choice!!

NON-WORKINGMONKEY said...

SHELTON. Give over. You get a comment to yourself. You may not have escaped us by the way as JM still eyeing up jobs in CAMBRIDGE . RUN FOR THE HILLS SHELTON RUN FOR THE HILLS

Anonymous said...

Moving tip: have a multinational corporation arrange to pack and ship your things for you and put you up in a nice hotel while a fairly patient British woman, who doesn't like you but it's not your fault you're grouchy because you slept funny and your neck is fucked and also jetlag, drives you around showing you houses and giving you wine gums at regular intervals because she knows the houses in comparison to what you are used to are total shit. But wait! Despite the wine gums' siren calls, stop and ask yourself: am I making this move with a total dick who will make my life an impossible misery ten years from now and leave me destitute? If so, find some way to jolly yourself along into packing your own things and finding your own house and do it as stealthily as possible.

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